Digital Death Management Services - Let Your Friends Know You've Passed

[SifuPhil]

I was reading the "Just Wondering" thread a while ago and I realized that I had seen services somewhere that automatically notify a list of people via email if you do not log-in to their service for a pre-determined amount of time. I did a little digging and came up with these 3 services, as well as a large list of "digital death management" sites that might be of use.

Dead Man's Switch - this service will send out your email messages to a select group of people if you don't respond to the service's email notifications after 3 attempts - 30, 45 and 52 days. On the 60th day of your not responding they send your messages.

Death Switch - similar to Dead Man's Switch. Both services offer free and premium accounts.

GhostMemo - performs the same functions as the previous two, in addition to allowing you to set the time intervals of notification emails sent by the service. So, if you have pets or a medical condition, you can set the action-level at 24 hours - if you don't respond to the email within that time your messages will go out to the appointed recipients.

Digital Death and Online Afterlife Services - A fairly comprehensive list of online services that handle e-wills, digital rights management, account depositions for services such as Facebook, online memorials (I've used these and think they're a good idea) and other postmortem affairs.

 

[Old Hipster]

It's a good idea.

I had an internet friend die. He lived in Scotland and I knew within 24 hours something was dreadfully wrong. Even when he had computer problems, he would alert me by a quick phone call. We were writing a book together so we were in contact daily, without fail.

It took about 3 days to get the Scottish police to break down his door and of course he had been dead for a number of days. I was able to contact a mutual friend in Scotland and she knew something was wrong too. She was relentless with the police and enlisted the aid of a another person who helped convince the coppers.

I have (had) another friend who I am positive died, but I was never able to confirm it.

So yeah those websites are a good idea.

 

[That Guy]

Having been such a loner, I'm looking forward to just disappearing and eventually someone will wonder, "Whatever happened to That Guy?"

 

[Jillaroo]

It's also important to take notice of your neighbours and if you haven't seen them for a few days do something about it, quite a few years back i read an item in the local paper that stated if you hadn't seen a neighbour for a few days to notify the Police, 2 old ladies lived across the road from me and they were very private and kept to themselves but after reading that i realised i hadn't seen them for a while so rang the Police, they went there and then the detective came and saw me, he was as white as a ghost, both ladies were deceased and had been for at least a fortnight, one was disabled and they feel the lady who wasn't had died and the other couldn't help and eventually died as well, it really saddened me to think that these dear souls had died and no-one had noticed, surely they had family.

 

[SifuPhil]

Having been such a loner, I'm looking forward to just disappearing and eventually someone will wonder, "Whatever happened to That Guy?"

That's a very Taoist desire - congrats.

Aside from my oldest son and my student, there aren't many people who would miss me. I DID have one online friend in California who, when I did my County time for 3 months, was frantically posting messages around the net trying to find out what happened to me. She even started calling police stations and hospitals in my area, but no one knew anything until I got back online.

Then she gave me a verbal spanking for the Ages. :sentimental:

So yeah, in that instance it would have been interesting - emails going out telling people I died, then I'm miraculously reborn.

It's also important to take notice of your neighbours and if you haven't seen them for a few days do something about it, quite a few years back i read an item in the local paper that stated if you hadn't seen a neighbour for a few days to notify the Police, 2 old ladies lived across the road from me and they were very private and kept to themselves but after reading that i realised i hadn't seen them for a while so rang the Police, they went there and then the detective came and saw me, he was as white as a ghost, both ladies were deceased and had been for at least a fortnight, one was disabled and they feel the lady who wasn't had died and the other couldn't help and eventually died as well, it really saddened me to think that these dear souls had died and no-one had noticed, surely they had family.

That certainly works in a "normal" neighborhood; unfortunately where I live people move in and out frequently so you never really know most of your neighbors, and with the quality of most of them you don't really want to. I'm not too concerned about a crack addict who mugs people having a heart attack, if you catch my drift.

Here it's like any other low-income area - you mind your own business or you get into trouble. Granted, calling the cops in a case such as yours is a blessed thing to do, but if we did that here I have the feeling they'd just tell me that they're too busy with "real work" to check on something like that.